Sleeping Beauty Pills
by Hongye
Summary: He lets the unfinished cigarette slip through his fingers to the ground. It falls as if time slows down at where he stands. He has been so absorbed in reminiscing this fond memory he shares with his brother he barely hears the warning bells ringing in his head but by the time he realizes— The whole place burns.


**Sleeping Beauty Pills**

 _(Title is inspired by **deadmau5 - Sleeping Beauty** Pills)_

 **Warnings:** Blood, violence, lots of cursing, implicit descriptions of going through an identity crisis and grief, traumatic experiences as well as self-loathing. Unedited.

* * *

Just as according to plan, he has failed.

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and-

He knows this, calculated every possible ways in his head and had everything played out exactly how it would happen—not how he wanted to happened of-fucking-course.

He had it all under control. He HAD control and now he's choking on his own failure.

He is aware that every outcome, no matter how much effort he has spent every fiber in his being to MAKE SURE it would not failed, results into him failing—fuck, and he did miserably at it.

Failed. A failure. Like how his brother used to view himself.

God, how could he live with this? Ray is still fucking alive. He is alert that it is nearly impossible for him to be tricked again. He has learned too much about him now and will recognize his ways immediately if he tries to kill Ray again.

He curls his lip into a sneer as he bit on it, leaving a trail of blood gripping down his chin. He indignantly wipes it off with his sleeve, furious at his own uselessness, and how he allows his overconfidence at trapping Ray where he wanted him to be getting over his head.

His rage takes care of ridding evidence in the funhouse. He smashes everything in sight, finding them all useless now. He uses his fists to punch through the televisions, his legs to kick everything apart and his body to push the already broken televisions and computers to the ground. Once he feels the bruises beginning to form on his body, he grabs a large hammer with two hands.

With a deranged smile on his face and a manic energy surging in his veins, he proceeds to destroy everything to broken pieces. He ignores the throbbing pain in his fists, where they are starting to crack bleeding. No, **nothing** is more painful than having your loved ones torn away from you and you could not do a _fucking_ thing about it.

He delights at the sound of all of it; pieces of glass and metal crack beneath his shoes as he steps on them and there is nothing else but his crazed laughter and the chaos he ripens around him – because destruction has been in his blood for a long time, taken in the form of ugly need of vengeance.

A voice in his head speaks: _This is art_ , it says. He wholeheartedly agrees as he throws his head back, laughing once more. After a while, it descends into small giggles with his back hunched forward and his shoulders still shaking.

He is done. All that is left are now scraps.

 _One more—one more thing left to do._

He goes back upstairs. There is a backdoor containing the stuff he has planned months before. He knows how his track would begin and how it would end—and it does not end just as he wanted it to be because fuck this brain of his.

He punches in the code: (his brother's birthdate), the door sliding open with no problem and he slips inside. There are several gasoline cans as well as ropes and a single chair at the center of the room and a couple of knives in various sizes hanging on the wall in the corner; their hilts are blue and red. On the blades carved 'Exclusively made for Ray-fucking-Kenney'.

He snarls madly at it and grabs the board holding them and tosses it to the ground. All of the knives clatter to the ground with loud 'clangs'. He curls his hands into fists and pounds them to his head repeatedly because the ringing would not FUCKING STOP.

He tightens his hold in his hair; his nails bury deep into his scalp, his teeth grinding and they scratch on his lip, making it bleed because _god, make it fucking stop!_

His head spinning, he tries to walk forward but his foot got caught by the chair's leg. He slumps ungraciously to the floor with a loud _fuck_ escaping his lips. He lays there with his back arching, unaware of the hot tears sliding down his cheeks.

God, he feels so damn _pathetic_ like goddamn child all over again. His legs are kicking in the air, his hands around his throat as he struggles to breathe. He removes his mask in an attempt to breathe properly but he only manages to push it to the side of his face. His mouth gaps like a fish searching for water.

 _NononononononononononoNO! Not now—not fucking now! I-I have to finish this, just let me finish this!_

He rolls on his stomach, briefly bangs his head on the floor for a good measure—he needs to get his head checked otherwise he would blacked out and sooner or later someone will find him and everything and every-fucking-thing he has done will be a fucking total waste of 10 years of his life.

Panting heavily, he drags his arms forward; his legs have already given up on him, forcing himself to rely greatly on his upper body towards the gasoline cans. His eyes are blurring with colors and dots and statics; he blinks them all away futilely. He summons all the remaining strength he has to push himself off the ground now that the ringing in his head subsided slightly. Nevertheless, he has to make this quick.

He stumbles on his feet, swaying a little as he tries to open one of the cans. His impatience worsens so he lets out a feral shout, pushing all of them off the shelves, their caps all

It takes him about 30 minutes.

One part of the job finished without any disturbance, now his body; he knows Ray will send someone to confirm his death and to retrieve his body. Like hell he would allow Ray to do that. So, he goes further into the backroom to the freezer, where it stores one of his decoy's bodies.

But this body is a little special. This certain decoy was just some kid wanting to make an easy living and what else but take a job imposing as a well-known DJ? Jamie B. Fox was the one whom he sent as bait to lure Pearce away. _HA, the irony_ , he snickers to himself. Pearce did not actually kill him but he died from a heart attack after being extremely intimidated by the vigilante anyway.

It turned out that the kid had always have heart failure due to large consumption of alcohol and the occasional cocaine and whatnot. All he knows is that Defalt decides that exchanging Jamie's profile to his own is so Pearce has no other means to get him and most importantly Ray will never find out that he survives.

J. B. Markowicz is dead. He has been a long time ago with his brother.

But Jamie Brandon Fox—Jamie still lives. And so does Defalt. Not for long though.

He enters the makeshift morgue, tugging out the body hastily. He shudders; not from the sight of the dead body of course but from the icy sting he feels poking his skin—it still has clothing on from his signature hoodie to his sneakers though the mask is missing, exposing a young face with purple and blue bruises covering the whole face, because it was broken where The Fox smashed his baton to it but it does not matter.

He takes off his own mask, allowing his dyed-blue bangs and dark chocolate eyes to be revealed. He stares at the bright blue mask in his hands for the first time, and for the last time, albeit he does so pondering.

This mask – it is a symbol of his fame and his future. It is what makes him powerful, feared. It is his life, his passion, his masterpiece—now it becomes something that is left behind, a forbidden memory, with nothing attached to it. It is now Defalt's legacy and the world will soon forgot about him. It is a whole part of him yet its time is up thus needs to be discarded. It is just a physical representation anyway; the real Defalt is already a whole part of him.

He places the mask on the body's face in position.

He then drags the decoy to the front where Ray left him dead—supposedly, mind you. He sits it down on the chair, allowing its limbs to be hanging on its sides as he pours the rest of the fuel over the ice-cold body.

He pulls out a lighter and an old crumpled Marlboro pack from the pocket in his jacket. He flicks his wrist, silently gazing at the fire before lighting the cigarette he has put in his mouth.

He inhales deeply, memorized by the taste of nicotine and the thick rings of smoke escaping his lips as he deprived himself from it for five years. When he closes his eyes, an image of him and his brother smoking together comes to his mind easily. They were exchanging a stick back-and-forth at the balcony of their shared apartment, hiding from the landlord who strictly opposes this habit, especially within the compound.

 _Well, it's been fun knowing you._

He lets the unfinished cigarette slip through his fingers to the ground. It falls as if time slows down at where he stands. He has been so absorbed in reminiscing this fond memory he barely hears the warning bells ringing in his head but by the time he realizes—

The whole place burns.

* * *

 **A/N:** This is more of a preview of half of the first chapter _of a multi-chapter (vent) fic_ but I have forgotten where I was going with it (somewhere in 2017), and it's filled with too many plot holes to continue on. I still like it, as a standalone oneshot and thus I shall share it.

Hope you like it.


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